Oklahoma Lane holds many stories

April 9, 2010

By Don McAlavy: Freedom columnist

If you don’t know where Oklahoma Lane is, then you’re a newcomer!

Yes, that’s right, if you don’t know where Oklahoma Lane is, then you’re a newcomer.

Located about six miles east of Farwell, this farming community has generated some “hard to believe, but true” tales. Here are a few samples: “In 1932 when we heard the government was going to pay us for plowing up cotton, my father griped, ‘If they take away our poverty we won’t have anything left.’”

That’s right, my dad, H. H. McAlavy, was a farmer: “One year the ground around Oklahoma Lane was so dry and hard, every time we dropped a seed at planting time it got a concussion.”

“We had a rooster who was so lazy he never learned to crow. He would wait for some more industrious rooster to crow and then nodded his head in agreement.”

“Oklahoma Lane was such a healthy place to live nobody ever died. Civic pride demanded that we have our own cemetery, so the leaders of the community met to discuss the problem. There was one old cowboy left over from the XIT ranching era who had no kin or friends. So they chased him down and killed him. Now we can proudly have our own cemetery.”

“One of the pioneer families was so well-to-do that all they used their Sears & Roebuck catalog for was to order stuff out of.”

“I wasn’t actually born in a half dug-out. My folks moved into one when we could afford it.”

“Once the ground was so hard that when we plowed it the mules all got hernias.”

“Old timers told the story about the agreeable buffalo hunter. It is said to have happened at the edge of the big lake north of were the churches are presently located at Oklahoma Lane. Back about 1840 this agreeable buffalo hunter was captured by a band of hostile Comanches. They decided to kill him on the spot. The chief of the Comanches, being a benevolent man, gave the hunter his choice. Would he prefer being burned at the stake or skinned alive by the squaws? Always agreeable, the unlucky hunter’s last words were: “It doesn’t matter – whatever is customary.”

“One time I asked one of the XIT cowboys why he was only wearing one spur.” He said, “Well, if one side of the horse goes, the other side has to follow.”

These and other “tales” were heard at the 1935 Oklahoma Lane Fourth of July picnic. I don’t vouch for their accuracy.